Updated

My brother and his son have been amassing the game consoles. When his daughter moved out, they converted the bedroom into a tacky game room. I don’t have a separate game room, using our tv family area as the gaming center, which I limit to the Wii and 360. So,  I’m showing his instead, which includes these consoles:

• Atari Pong Bentley Compu-Vision [1983, one of the last pong consoles made]
• Intellivision
• Sega Genesis
• Nintendo 64
• Dreamcast
• Gamecube
• PS2
• Xbox
• Xbox 360 [downstairs]
• Wii

The video doesn’t serve the room well because it’s pretty comfortable. Their Xbox 360 is connected to the tv downstairs, but my 17-year-old nephew and his friends spend most of their time either in this upstairs room or in their computer room, where they have 3 computers set up for LAN gaming. Earlier in the year, after completing a tough school project, they played Modern Warfare and Halo for a while and then asked about playing on the computers. His friends had never played Diablo II or Starcraft. For the rest of the year, his friends came over regularly to play those older PC games.  Several times, he had game parties with friends gaming on the PCs and upstairs [often with Starfox]. My brother and sister-in-law got into the game nights, cooking hamburgers or whatever for the kids.

I’ve been trying to get my son’s friends together regularly for gaming, both board and video games. It is a fun time because, not only is it nostalgic, the kids’ excitement is infectious. When we visited my brother’s family a while back, my kids loved playing Starfox, although it was difficult, especially for my daughter. New multiplayer games are fun, but some of those older multiplayer games have a visceral experience that makes them great even among HD games.

The great thing about all those consoles is so many excellent games to play. Tired of StarFox 64? Then play Champions of Norrath or TimeSplitters 2 on the PS2. Or Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles or Toy Commander on the Dreamcast. Or Bomberman Blast and  Mario Kart Wii. Those boys even fire up Pong on occasion.

Anyone get any particular gifts they’d like to share?

When the post office delivered my wife’s present for me, I picked it up and noticed that it was quite heavy. I suspected that it might be a blu ray player, given the size and weight. I was very much surprised to find that it was Wii Fit, which might be her way of saying I need to lose weight.

My brother gave me an Atari Flashback 2, which was very unexpected. The kids were actually very interested to play it, and I was amazed that Pong was amused us for a good hour. My son, who is now obsessed with playing the Fusion Fall MMO, found Pong to be somewhat harder than he expected, and I could see where it required more eye-hand coordination than many games he plays.

Meanwhile, my brother is now obsessing on vintage game consoles, as he’s bidding on a Magnavox Odyssey on eBay. I recommended the Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 to him. Even though there are much easier and cheaper ways to play those games now, he admits that he’s more interested in the hardware than the games themselves.

That said, as I continued to work on Christmas day and wrap up a project, this is one of those Christmas holidays where I definitely appreciate my family. The recent months have been a little tough for several family members, so it’s been good to spend time with my mom and focus on the kids, not on going to parties, buying stuff, etc.